


Along the Horizon

by AtomicPen, felspar



Series: In the Heights They Found Solace [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eventual relationship, Eye of the Falcon Universe, F/M, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-22 18:35:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4845995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtomicPen/pseuds/AtomicPen, https://archiveofourown.org/users/felspar/pseuds/felspar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bits and pieces of a larger AU story, Eye of the Falcon, with parts written by AtomicPen and felspar both. May contain AUs in of itself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Late Nights, No Audiences

_Sié crieghen,_

_Never will it be said that I have any kind of way with words, but your siein t-grabhan moroún im sié oldoúnne waer fenn grabhe im té mithaenne--your help, that is to say, has been... abhaectrenaugh, ah--so important. I do not know what I would do without your counsel--breamoúr t-acrila sié acrila im darneth baelo ellaen m'oboro. Eansheen niscreel t-eanoch sién--I will be sorry to see you leave when this is all done._

_-Sebastian_

Her breath stuck in her throat. Wide eyes paced back and forth, up and down the words in front of her until she could be sure she'd read true. And even then she was dubious.

He had to have been drunk, hadn't he? To come sliding notes under her door in the dead of night--the sound of his footsteps were unmistakable now, muffled though they were--and to forget she'd picked up as much of the Starkish tongue as she did.

The corners of her mouth curled up. For a drunk, his penmanship was quite impressive.

She could feel the color rising in her cheeks and she held the note in both hands, the scent of ink and of him still fresh on the page. It was a girlish thing she did, hiding her face in it and touching with forehead then nose then lips, but she allowed herself the indulgence. Tonight, she had no audience.


	2. A Hard Choice

Staring at the intricately carved doors before her, she steeled herself with a slow, steadying breath before she could go forward.

Swallowing hard, Igraine forced herself to push through and begin searching for a place to stand and watch the ceremony, looking every bit the picture of detached elegance in deep blues and shining Warden insignia. She should have been on the road a full day by now, but even with every fiber of her being shouting at her to flee, she remained. Just one more day, she promised herself, for him and to see this through. One hand bunched white-knuckled in her skirts as the processional began to play, and when the rest of the room looked to the new Prince and Princess of Starkhaven, Igraine’s grey gaze leveled straight ahead.

_____________

Sebastian's heart sank to the pit of his stomach even as breath caught in a tangled mess in his throat. He hadn't been sure if she would come or not, and, if he were being honest with himself, he wasn't even sure if he  _wanted_ her to come or not. It hurt him, her insistence that he marry someone who could guarantee him much-needed heirs. Especially after they found each other after so many years, after all the time they'd spent together and all that they had shared.

Part of him had hoped she wouldn't come, that he wouldn't have to look on her face while he wed another. That he wouldn't have to be faced with her resolve to leave him.

But another part wanted her to come, wanted her to throw open the doors and run through, breathlessly demanding the ceremony stop because she realized it was the wrong decision after all.

Instead, he watched her stand stock-still in the back of the room as the music began to play, marking the start of the ceremony, her eyes focused on nothing ahead of her. She looked toward him, but not at him, not even through him. Sebastian's own eyes dulled, feeling his heart thicken into numbness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally found [here](http://felspar.tumblr.com/post/116439542460/staring-at-the-intricately-carved-doors-before) on tumblr


	3. One Week and Counting

In the end, he hadn't been able to go through with the wedding.

Halfway through he'd found the courage to glance back to where Igraine had been standing, only to find her gone. Even though he had never wanted to go through with it, he cobbled the strength to follow her wishes--what she thought would be best--as he knew she was watching. He did not want it, did not like it, but he would go through with it for her, if nothing else.

But to see her vanished... With a touch of desperation, Sebastian scanned over the heads of the crowd, seeing plenty of red-headed guests, but none that were his--none that were Igraine Cousland. Coming to the realization that she had fled in truth, his own resolve crumbled.

Taking a step back from the noblewoman before him, away from the Revered Mother marrying them, he gave a sudden and vehement shake of his head.

"No," he croaked, interrupting the Revered Mother mid-sentence. Everyone turned to look at him, shocked.

"No," he repeated. "I cannot go through with this... this farce."

Gasps rippled through the room, including from the woman and the Mother both. Sebastian opened his mouth to try and explain further, but nothing came out. Distraught, he turned and fled from the room, abandoning the ceremony and all the gathered guests without a second glance or another spared thought.

The only thing on his mind was Igraine.

_____________

That was six days past. Six days of searching, five nights of shallow, restless sleep. He'd taken to pacing, to walking past her old rooms as if she'd suddenly appear there again one day.

By the third day, he had to confront his cabinet to discuss what he had done. Some of them felt he could still salvage the marriage, but he had immediately shot them down. He would not wed someone he did not love, not even for the sake of an heir. It was not unprecedented that an heir was named, he argued. Nevermind all those had been nullified upon the birth of an heir by blood. By that time, however, none of his cabinet suggested otherwise.

The fourth night he could not stand to be alone in his bed, in his immense chambers. He set to walking, carefully avoiding the particular section of ramparts where he had met with her in the small hours of the morning. It was no surprise to him that he ended up by her rooms, and so he sat in them, that night and the following ones, accompanied only by her mabari.

Lugh rested his chin on the prince's thigh, brows furrowed as he gave a long, low whine and a half-wag of stumpy tail.

A sad smile tugged at the corner’s of Sebastian’s mouth. “You and I both,” he said around the momentary hitch in his voice. He ran his fingers over Lugh’s big head, scratching halfheartedly behind the mabari’s ears. The chair Sebastian slouched in was in her room, and he looked at her empty, pristine bed through reddened eyes with her faithful mabari leaning heavy against his leg.

“A week gone with no word for either of us,” he said softly. “Me, I could see–should have seen. She couldn’t have known I’d not be able to go through with it the bloody night of. But you…” His fingers rubbed the back of the hound’s head in an attempt to comfort, unsure if he meant it more for the dog or himself.

Lugh whined again, the sound vibrating through Sebastian’s thigh, a tremor in his pitch the prince felt shake in his bones.


	4. The Hunt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ancient Celt AU

She waited.

He stripped down to his waist, one of a dozen other men all standing in a glen, the sweat starting to bead on the back of his neck already. The seasons turned swiftly toward summer in the lowlands, and cicadas filled the late afternoon air with their unbroken, pulsing thrum. Shoulders set back and spine straightening, it was his turn. Three women approached him–one carried two weapons, a feathered spear and a blade, another carried a bowl of thick, dark liquid, and the third carried nothing but a heavy air around her. Her dark hair ran waves down part her waist, held back from her face in the heat that she did not seem to notice.

She spoke words to him, old words, words that had not been spoken in the halls of his father for generations. Words in a tongue his father’s father had taught him, years ago. She dipped her hands into the bowl, fingers dark and dripping as she placed them on his skin and drew whorls and spirals that followed the curves of his muscles, the shadows that fell from the trees. When she finished, she stepped back and the woman holding the weapons handed them to him, smiling at him as he gave her a bow of respect. The women moved on from him, repeating the same ritual with the remaining men, save without the dagger, until the women were finished, and returned to face all of them. Some held themselves unnaturally still, some shifted

A horn sounded. His breath sank to the bottom of his lungs, and the muscles in his forearms flexed. The dagger he slipped through his belt. He’d need two hands to start.

_She glided, bare feet whispering across fur skins and beneath long skirts, around the room, lighting candles as she went._

His heart roared like thunder in his chest, sweat coating the lines of his back and neck, feet pounding over the rocky ground in chase. There was no need to track hoof prints over the ground once he caught sight of antlers in the golden light.

The stag was swift, but so was he, and he could hear the whooping calls and shouts of the other men trailing behind him. Air burned from his throat to his lungs, as if he breathed fire, and he felt the shock of each lope against the hard earth in his hips. He did not slow his speed, yet still those behind him drew nearer. Blood rushed through his ears, down into the arm, the hand holding the spear.

It was now, it had to be now. His whole being focused on the stag racing before him, trying to lose those that hunted it, but he trusted the power coiled in his own shoulders, and threw the spear in tandem with his stride.

_She raised her chin and closed her eyes as ancient lines and curves were painted dark against her skin._

It struck the back muscle of the stag, faltering it, and he surged forward, drawing the sacred dagger to complete the circle. Sweat streaked the dark circles on his skin.

_She waited, heart racing at the sound of a second horn._

It was done. The woman who had held the dagger and spear came to her, asked if she consented to admit the Consort.

She answered yes, and he filled up the doorway, the woman bowing out past him and sweat running down the trench of his spine.


	5. Not A Stranger

"Lugh, what are you doing here?" Igraine couldn't get another word in for several moments as her arms were suddenly full of Mabari and she laughed into wet dog kisses and overjoyed barking. "This is no place for an old man like you," she tapped his muzzle, which was beginning to turn white against the usual grey and black mottling. "And you'll wake the baby, besides. How in Andraste's name did you find me...?" She hadn't yet noticed the figure who had entered during all the commotion.

The old mabari’s trail was easy to follow, barreling through the brush off the path, though Sebastian’s light jog wasn’t enough to keep up with the hound once he got a wild hair to go find whatever it was he caught scent of. At first, the muffled sounds that followed Lugh’s disappearance made Sebastian think he’d caught a hare or some other squealing animal, but as he neared, he realized the sound was a voice.

Curious, he slowed his pace and moved with the bends and breath of the woods, not entirely creeping, but trying to keep his approach from being too overt. Lugh was friendly enough to most people, but Sebastian had never really known him to go running after someone like that. No one except—He pushed thoughts of her from his mind; it had been over a year since she had fled and no word. He had to learn to stop thinking of her around every corner. If she had wanted to come back to him, she would have by now.

It was then, amid Lugh’s happy barking, that he heard the laughter—and it was all at once so strange and so familiar. His heart wrenched tightly, dropped to somewhere closer to his stomach than his chest, and for the span of several breaths, he couldn’t force his feet to move. When he did, he slowly padded to the edge of a clearing in which he spotted Lugh’s grey mottled mass, wriggling excitedly overtop a pinned figure, with a simple wooden hut sitting behind them. A smoking fire with a cauldron hanging over it sputtered next to the hut, blocked from his view.

Clear as a bell, sharp as a blade, words from the figure reached Sebastian and rooted him to the ground—“you’ll wake the baby, besides.”

He knew that laugh, he knew that voice, and she had not been with child when she fled his halls in the middle of the night. His throat tightened; he wasn’t certain he could say anything even if any words at all were to come to his mind.

 _Baby_. It rang through his mind, guttered in the empty hollow of his chest. Should he expect someone else to emerge from her hut? Carrying a tiny child with wisps of red hair and eyes as fair as the forest? 

A quick and hot anger lanced through his gut. He should turn, should go and leave her to her reunion with her mabari, to the life she’d chosen over him. He knew he wasn’t being fair, that if anyone had betrayed whatever could have been between them—what he’d wanted to have been between them—it was probably him that was the worst offender of them both.

Instead he cleared his throat and croaked her name. “Igraine?”

At the sound of his voice, Lugh turned his sloppy attention back to Sebastian, tong lolling out of his mouth. The figure beneath him suddenly froze, and peered out at him from around the hound, her eyes wide.

He felt his heart drop another few inches. Maybe he really should have left while they were both distracted and he had the chance.

The lightness of her reunion with Lugh all drained from the air, Igraine slowly got to her feet, her hand absently straying to Lugh’s withers—an old habit still not fled even from a year apart.

“Sebastian,” she said, and her voice was subdued. “I did not expect you.”

“I—” His words caught in his throat, and he had to swallow before he could continue. “I was not expecting… you—this, either.”

Watching the color drain from her face, the knot of fear in his stomach tightened. All at once he felt self-conscious of the thin grey streaks he knew were coming in at his temples, streaks that were not there until after she had fled. She seemed to him as radiant as ever, if it a bit more touched by the sun and weariness.

Her eyes flicked away from his, to the ground. “Now that you’re here… I suppose there is much to tell you.”

Sebastian’s own gaze broke from her, and he was quiet for so long she looked back up at him. “No,” he said finally. “I should probably go and leave you to Lugh and…” Trailing off, he found he could not finish the sentence. He turned from her to walk back the way he had come.

“Sebastian,” she said, and the sound of his name coming from her broke his resolve. “Please. I—You should stay. There is someone you should meet.”

Shoulders bowing just a moment before he consciously straightened, he turned back to face her.

“I… all right.”

_____________

Igraine’s expression was weary but well schooled, though her hand had begun to shake as Sebastian made to leave and had not stopped entirely. He didn’t know, couldn’t know, she reminded herself, unless she showed him. Swallowing hard, she turned and began to lead him toward the hut. 

It was a tiny thing, one room and hastily-made which gave it the look of something temporary, but judging by the plants growing under the single window and the neatly swept stoop she had been living there much longer than originally intended. Her steps were quiet, and as they approached the door she motioned for Lugh and Sebastian to soften theirs as well, gently ushering them inside. 

Bundles of dried herbs hung from the beams of the low ceiling and a small stone hearth stood at one end of the room, the fire having been banked for the day. Next to it sat a lone rocking chair and table, and against the opposite wall was a simple bed beside what was unmistakably a child’s cradle. Despite its modesty, it was clear she had made the place a home as best she could. 

“I had no way of knowing…I was told it was impossible for a Warden,” Igraine kept her voice to a murmur, still hesitant to meet Sebastian’s gaze. “But after a few months on the road I knew something wasn’t right. I…couldn’t go back to Starkhaven, not like that. So I kept running. When the time came, I stopped here.” 

She moved to where the cradle stood, bending over and carefully folding back part of the woolen tartan which swaddled the bundle sleeping inside. This was met with a groggy noise of protest and she huffed a hushed laugh in spite of herself, beckoning Sebastian to come closer. For several long moments silence lingered while Igraine brushed her thumb along the babe’s round cheek, brushing back bright auburn curls. 

Finally, she found the courage to look up at Sebastian, her expression considerably softer as she studied his face. 

“Her name is Moragh.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Sebastian Vael Appreciation Week (originally found [here](http://atomicpen.tumblr.com/post/115627849234/lugh-what-are-you-doing-here-igraine-couldnt) and [here](http://felspar.tumblr.com/post/115846580190/lugh-what-are-you-doing-here-igraine-couldnt) on tumblr)


End file.
